N's Torchwood Minifics
by Nancy Brown
Summary: Commentfics and drabbles, collected in one handy file. Added: 'Angel on My Shoulder'
1. Four Minifics, all pairings and ratings

Title: Truth, Justice  
Rating: R  
Characters: Owen/Superman  
Warnings: dubcon (AMTDI)  
A/N: Mandr wanted Superman/Owen. So I wrote her some. :)

"It's like this," Jack had said. "If any of the rest of us go, we're going to fall in love with him. Can't help it," he added, rubbing the fading Super-hickey on his neck.

"Fine," Owen had grumbled. "Now, you said this green shit acts as a natural counter-agent to the alien, right?"

"Oh. Yeah."

Fucker LIED. The green shit only made Kal weaken, and look at Owen with wounded blue eyes, and Owen couldn't stand it, couldn't face hurting him. Already he was pulling the rock away, hurtling it as far as he could from them, as Kal gasped for air.

"Thank you," whispered Kal, and Owen's heart fluttered against all reason.

"Well, you know."

Owen slung one of Kal's arms over his shoulder as they began the trek back towards the city. America wasn't so bad, he reckoned, not with gorgeous alien blokes on guard. Jack's voice echoed in his head again, something about Kryptonian pheromones, but Jack was always talking shit, wasn't he? Kal was warm against Owen, and he was smiling into Owen's neck as they walked, and Owen liked it, liked making Kal happy and proud.

"You did the right thing," said Kal, as they rested against a tree. It ought to have sounded cheesy and stupid, but Owen's chest swelled up even further.

Owen didn't know what to say, feeling both like a tiny ant against this giant of a good man, and also like the most special person in all the world because Superman was complimenting him. Feeling brave, bold even, he closed the gap between them and pressed his lips against the perfect, firm mouth. Kal responded after a second, and his breath was sweet and his mouth tasted like sunshine and like berries Owen had devoured as a kid, and Ianto was never going to let him live this down after all the "Of course you're gay, you're fucking a _man_" comments.

Then Kal's hand was cradling his chin, and Owen stopped giving a shit. The Doctor was an alien, and Jack would give anything to shag _him_, and Jack himself was born on another planet, so really, was Owen doing anything the others wouldn't? Kal moved his tongue just so, and Owen moaned.

Later, Ianto asked him, "So, was it the truth, the justice, or the American way that got him into your pants?"

"Fuck you, Jones." He rubbed his neck. His wasn't going to fade nearly as fast as Jack's had. Oh well.

* * *

Title: If a Tree Falls in a Timeloop  
Rating: R  
Characters: John/Gwen/Jack  
A/N: Foxy needed a cheer-up 'fic.

John's mouth is hard, which she remembers from their first poisoned kiss, but his hands are soft against her shoulders, so perfectly gentle she can't imagine it's the same man. Jack's lips are in her hair, and his hands are stroking John's upper arms like he's petting a large cat. Gwen feels John's coldness against her cheek, Jack's heat at her back radiating through both their shirts.

Jack breathes in her ear: "The timeloop will reset in two hours."

"Let's not waste it," she says, and John gives a throaty chuckle as he reaches for the buttons of her blouse.

* * *

Title: Hell, Yeah! (erm, more a working title than anything else)  
Rating: PG  
Characters: Eugene Jones, Dalek Beta  
A/N: Blue (being all anon and stuff) wanted Eugene to meet the felicitating dalek. I kept misreading "felicitating."

Eugene left the shop with his hands empty. Mum wanted a particular scent this year for Christmas, showed him the bottle and told him the brand, and do any of these places still have some? Of course not. He found the stupid bloody robot ball his brother wanted, not a proper Transformer at all, but Mum was going to be disappointed.

Eugene didn't like thinking about how much his Mum was disappointed in him already.

He kicked a lamppost as he walked by it, annoyed with himself. He'd buy her flowers on his way home, and he'd try better next year.

The air in front of him flashed, and --

"EMERGENCY TEMPORAL SHIFT COMPLETED. ACCESSING LOCAL SOURCES FOR CURRENT LOCATION."

Eugene's mouth fell open. An alien! An alien robot! In front of him! "I come in peace!" he said to the alien, as others on the street looked on curiously.

Two kids walked over, dragging their mum. "Lookit! S'nalien!"

"It's street theatre, dears," she said in a tired voice, forcing them away.

The robot, which resembled a large Art Deco pepper pot with an emphasis on toilet fixtures, revolved one long eyestem at him, and Eugene pressed back. "WHAT IS THE DATE?"

"What?"

"WHAT IS THE DATE?"

"It's, uh, Christmas Eve," stammered Eugene.

The eyestem watched him, and fear trickled into Eugene's thoughts. Aliens were amazing, and his biggest wish was happening right now, but a tiny voice that sounded more than a bit like his Mum perked up in the back of his mind letting him know he was probably about to die messily.

The inner voice also asked him about the current cleanliness of his boxer shorts.

Then the alien robot produced a red Father Christmas hat out of nowhere, and plopped it onto Eugene's head.

"FELICITATE! FELICITATE!"

Eugene's palms began to sweat. "But ... I mean, you're a robot! You don't have a ... " He watched the doodah roller nervously, wondering if it would even fit into his mouth.

"FELICITATE! AND UNLIKELY OMNIPOTENT SUPERNATURAL BEING PROVIDE FAVOUR FOR ALL." It paused. "EVERY ONE!"

The alien vanished in another flash, leaving Eugene on the street with a floppy red velour hat. A floppy red alien velour hat. This was so going into his collection.

A/N: Solstice wrote a followup Dalek story with Dalek Beta Does the New Year for ME! So that made it extra awesome.

* * *

Title: News at Eleven  
Rating: R (language)  
Characters: Suzie, Tosh (Suzie/Tosh?)  
A/N: Blue wanted Suzie with a surprise guest, either Tosh or the Risen Mitten. I did this one, Lioness did the other. :D

Suzie's flat fills with a warm, good smell. She'd say it reminds her of Christmastime when she was a child, but her memories aren't pleasant to relive. The microwave beeps at her, and she burns her fingers on the ready meal's tray.

God, this is depressing. Maybe she should go in and take the shift for Jack.

The doorbell rings. If Owen is fucking drunk again …

"Hi." Tosh's smile is hopeful as she holds up a bag. "I brought Chinese."

Suzie opens a bottle, and they split the food and the wine, and make a memory of their own.


	2. Puppy Love JOHN HART

A/N: This is late for the porn battle proper and doesn't even feature proper sexxins. It came (ahem) to me last night right before bed and I couldn't resist. Sorry, Foxy.

**Puppy Love**

Well, the arse had gone and done it, hadn't he? Blown himself up and let the whole mess go right to hell. John, because he was feeling very "John" today, kicked at rubble as the rebuild of the ruined Plass went on around him. Destruction everywhere, and these little Cardiff worker ants kept putting their nest back together for the next boot to stomp it. Pathetic, he thought, because he didn't care to acknowledge the admiration.

"We're putting together a new team," was all her note had said, and he'd come out of curiosity. Might find something worth stealing or shagging or both, and anyway he was bored ever since Jack had buggered off for points unknown.

That's when he saw the most gorgeous creature he'd ever smacked eyes on, at least in the past ten minutes. Setting a feral grin at his lips, and a sexy swagger at his hips, John sauntered over to the edge of the crumbled Basin, where the newest love of his life stood still all unawares, taking readings.

"Is that a sonic disintegrator you've got extended, or are you just happy to meet me?"

There was a promising whirring noise.

"Oh dear," said K-9.


	3. Competition TOSH AND MARTHA

Title: Competition  
Author: **nancybrown**  
Fandom: Torchwood  
Characters: Tosh, Martha (team)  
Rating: PG  
Summary: Drabble. Tosh tries to like Martha.  
A/N: Written for **halfamoon**.

It isn't as though Tosh dislikes Martha. She's accepted the fact that the UNIT doctor isn't there to drag her back, no matter what Toshiko's sweating palms say. That Owen watches Martha with admiration, and more, is just part and parcel of Tosh's sadly nonromantic relationship with him. Jack adores Martha, and the others seem to like her.

Toshiko tries.

She smiles at her. She asks Martha's opinion during meetings. But it's hard to forgive her when Martha is the one Owen gives his life for, and she knows she'll fail when, after, Martha calls her distant boyfriend to mourn.


	4. Vacation ALICE AND JENNY

Title: Vacation  
Author: **nancybrown**  
Fandoms: Torchwood/Doctor Who  
Characters: Alice, Jenny  
Rating: G  
Summary: Drabble. Alice and Jenny are not good at taking time off.  
A/N: Written for **halfamoon**. For more drabbles with these two (and an explanation of what they're doing together) please see "In My Unique Position."

They had intended this particular trip to be a holiday. Hilda, the ship's AI, said they needed a break, so Jenny pointed to a planet with a tropical climate, and Alice donned a bikini.

Jenny might have checked the timeline of the planet to find, for example, when the Civil War happened, and consequently not landed them in the middle of it. But then she wouldn't be Jenny.

Instead, Alice, still in her bikini, finds herself leading the resistance, while Jenny works with their scientists to prevent an oncoming environmental catastrophe, and honestly, holidays are clearly meant for other people.


	5. Motto TEAM

**Title:** Motto  
**Author: ****nancybrown**  
**Rating: **R  
**Characters: **Team  
**Spoilers: **none  
**Warnings: **contains language (I kill me.)  
**Wordcount: **250  
**Summary: **"If it's alien, it's ours" doesn't cut it anymore.  
**A/N:** You know those stories I post occasionally that I don't have any excuse for whatsoever except that they fell out of my head? This is one of those stories.

The fall of Torchwood London meant a new beginning for the rest of the Institute: new vision, new goals, and a new corporate motto. "If it's alien, it's ours" didn't apply when the acting head of Torchwood was born on another planet, and as one of their new goals was to locate and work with the elusive Doctor rather than capture and contain him, the old motto needed updating.

The remaining employees of the Institute (those who were not dead, missing, Retconned, retired, or under permanent psychiatric care) were polled informally for a new motto on a day when the head of the Institute was bored and had tired of throwing small desk items at his employees' heads.

"Everything changes," was considered too generic, as was, "You gotta be ready."

"Improving life on Earth, one discovery at a time," sounded good but was voted down on the grounds that none of them could honestly name a time when they'd improved things so much as tried to make them not suck more.

"Defending the Earth from alien threats," was cheesy but descriptive.

"The greatest job that'll destroy your faith in humanity and rip away everything you've ever loved," was voted down for its accuracy.

The matter was never satisfactorily settled, as the conversation was cut short by a police report about "hooligans in fancy dress" which almost always turned out to be aliens. The unofficial motto was coined in a mutter as they hurried out to the SUV:

"We're all fucked."


	6. The Way You Think IANTO FoB ADULT

**The Way You Think**  
Characters: Ianto/Face of Boe (Jack/Ianto, Jack/Ianto/OFCs)  
warnings: shades of dubcon  
prompt: Ianto/Face of Boe, giant head WITH TENTACLES is kink enough

It's a head. In a jar. And it's staring at him.

Ianto takes another drink from the fluted glass he's been served. Over the past several months of his travels, he's developed a taste for this particular nectar, and anyway, it gives him something to do with his hands. He's getting used to being stared at, but that doesn't mean he likes it.

He is being chatted up by a green alien with five eyes, and its companion, which appears to be a sentient gas. Ianto is an oddity, a human in a time when humans are rarely seen in this part of the galaxy, and he feeds on their titters at his stories of Cardiff, of home. He's the exotic one, which means he's invited to receptions and events as a curiosity, and it also means his meals and transport are usually handled for him. It's better than being put into a zoo.

"So there we were, both covered in mud ... "

"Actual mud?" breathes the gas. "Decay and worm dung and water mixed to a paste?"

"Exactly," says Ianto, though he's never spent much time thinking about the components of dirt. "And Dad just said, 'Did you remember to pick up the lemons?'" He laughs at the memory, and his companions laugh as well, whether or not they understand why it's funny.

The head in the jar is still staring. As the other two move to mingle with the other guests, a short alien in a robe approaches Ianto respectfully. "Sir?"

Another thing to get used to. "Hello."

"His August Personage the Face of Boe has requested your presence." There's a note in the alien's voice that suggests the request is not negotiable. Ianto has heard the name before, mentioned as another distinguished guest at this reception. He's under the impression that the Face of Boe is there as a respectable guest, though, and not part of the sideshow entertainment.

"Of course." He follows the alien to the head in the jar, and tilts his torso respectfully.

Words appear in his mind, and by the reactions of the attendants around him, they appear in theirs as well: "You are human."

"Last I checked, yes." He expected something more formal, and now he's off-guard. He plays with his glass, and hopes he won't start stuttering, like he did when he first appeared in this time, lost among the stars and frightened.

"From Earth."

"Yes."

Now he knows where this is going, and he starts working out a polite excuse. Humans, especially Earth-based, are famous for many reasons, but in this era, the chief factoid Everyone Knows about them is that they'll have sex with anything. Having listened to various iterations and descriptions of this reputation, Ianto blames Jack, and suspects the man of founding at least two human religions based solely on pornography. Since arriving here, Ianto has been propositioned at almost every event he's attended. He's said yes to a few of the offers, figuring Jack had plenty of good things to say about interspecies sex. He wasn't kidding.

"Tell me," says the voice in Ianto's head. "Tell me of your Earth."

Ianto launches into a story, one of the several he keeps on hand for these things. The party-goers want tales of how simple and quirky his life was, so he tends to leave out the part where he chased aliens for a living. Because he is thinking of Jack again, he tells about a funny picnic they had, skimming over the blowjob he'd given Jack, focusing instead on the part where they were surprised by a large dog that had got loose and they ended up in a duck pond.

"So, dripping wet," Ianto says, because aliens really go for the stories where the humans end up messy, "we make our way back to the picnic blanket. Everything's scattered but the wine bottle's still upright, so we share the bottle back and forth until the dog's owner comes walking by, and she says, 'What on Earth happened?' and Jack says, 'It rained. Want some wine?'"

Rumbling laughter fills his mind, and it's pleasant. Other guests have wandered over, seeking audience with the head in the jar, but as Ianto starts to wander off, he hears a voice in his head that he somehow knows is only for him: "Stay."

The memory of that day comes back, like it's being teased from his mind, but the parts he didn't tell are suddenly in the forefront. As though he's on the blanket on his knees, instead of standing at a party holding a glass, Ianto can smell Jack, feel his mouth full of warm cock. Jack makes those soft gasps he always does, thrusting in deep, and Ianto forgets how to breathe, even as the Golari Ambassador bows to him and then to the Face in the jar. The Face is thinking something at the Ambassador, but its ancient eyes are on Ianto.

The memory morphs, and Jack is kissing the dog's owner, who enjoyed the wine thoroughly, while Ianto's hand is on her thigh stroking upwards under the loose skirt she's wearing. She's making soft, pleased noises in her throat as Jack holds her face. Ianto wants to move his hand further, knows he'll meet soft cotton already damp with arousal, but the dog barks, and she breaks the kiss with a disappointed laugh. They don't get her name as she goes to collect her pet, but she waves in the departing sunshine, and for a moment, he can see another future where they took her back to his flat and he and Jack set a contest to see who could make her come more times, and then she's gone.

He is standing rock still, his glass clutched in a deathgrip as the memories come through. This alien is sifting through his thoughts like he'd page through a book. "I hope you're enjoying yourself," he says quietly.

"It has been a long time since my physical form had encounters this way. I almost forgot how it felt."

Ianto doesn't have that issue, overwhelmed with sense memories of mouth and cock and arse and balls. The mental cataloguing touches his thoughts of Lisa, and delicately closes that door again, allowing him some shred of privacy. It's Jack, and then a moment with Jack and the woman they picked up from that club two nights later, both filled with regret that the last encounter hadn't continued. It is hurried kisses and quick fumbles and slow fucking in the cramped camp bed, each memory pulled out and analysed by the intruding mind.

He's going to come in his pants right here, and that will be a story for the next cocktail party. Probably earn him an invitation to five more after that. Meet the freak.

"No," says the Face, and the memories stop abruptly, leaving him staggering. The nearest alien touches his arm to help him steady.

"Are you well?"

"The nectar," Ianto lies, and hands off his glass to a passing waiter. That should be him, serving drinks and food quietly while the crème of society wander and chat and tell snobbish jokes about humans. He gives the waiter a friendly, understanding smile, but the waiter is no more human than any of the others here, and merely gives him a polite nod in return. "Goes to my head," he says to the concerned alien.

"Allow him to rest," says the Face to an attendant, and Ianto is led off to a quiet chamber some corridors away from the party. He would be frightened, but he stopped fearing for himself months ago. He's been told he will return home eventually, from an unimpeachable source. When he is taken somewhere, he no longer thinks he is being locked in a cell.

There's a bed. He thanks his guide and he lies down, shivering from the onslaught of memories.

Time passes, not much time but enough, and the door chimes. As he sits up, he sees the utterly mad vision of the giant jar outside his room. Someone's room. Is this the Face's quarters? Too Spartan, he thinks, for such a well-known personage.

The attendants help the jar into the room, and respectfully bow outside. The door shuts.

"Apologies," says the voice in his mind. "It was rude to wander through your thoughts. I know better."

"Thanks." He draws his knees up to his chest, feeling exposed, alone in the room with this creature.

"I have millions of years of memories. Species and worlds that are long gone that only remain in my mind and no other's."

"Were you collecting my thoughts to preserve them? Seems a funny set to want."

That mental laughter again. "No, pure selfishness. I've lost so much." Such regret in the thought. "I forgot about the day in the park with the dog."

Ianto's head snaps up, his mind filling with images not his own, jumbled together: faces of friends, swelling affection, Martha and Gwen both wrinkled and grey and still lovely, Owen's sharp laugh, a shy smile from Tosh, a flash of Hart, so many flickers of the Doctor, so much love, and with it, Ianto's face shown back at him like a flipbook of emotions and moments, treasured with the rest.

The surge of emotion fills him, pulls tears to his eyes which he wills away. "God. You kept us forever."

"I kept what I could." Ianto wonders if that's what brought on this change, if Jack surrendered his body to keep room in his mind for those he'd loved.

"No," says the Face, reading his thoughts again. "But that's a story for another time." His mind flows into Ianto's again, and Ianto welcomes the intrusion now, feels tendrils of thought wrap around every memory he has of Jack, of their friends, letting emotions both fine and base have equal care under his touch. But there are some he focuses on more.

"Millions of years old, and you still only have a one-track mind."

"Like I said, it has been a long time."

"I can't imagine you giving up sex."

"I did not give it up. I changed how it happened." And now the tendrils attached to the Face are pulsing, and Ianto has some pretty clear ideas of what they do. Shrouded in smoke, caught in a jar.

"Jack?"

Suddenly he feels the fingers on his body, though he and Jack are separated by the glass, each tentacle with a phantom self moving over him like a finger, a snake. His mind falls open again, with the scratchy blanket under his knees in the park, the distant sounds of traffic and the closer sounds of birds and from far off, a bark. Without touching him, tentacles stroke his balls, and play with the sensitive flesh around his hole, and his mouth is heavy with the taste of Jack, the blunt head going into his throat. More tentacles are on his nipples and at the soles of his feet, and running like hands up and down his shaft, and his thoughts are full of thrusting hard into Jack as he writhes, aiming for his sweet spot amid the tight heat, watching his face, contorted and beautiful. His face.

When the orgasm hits, burning through him like a wildfire, his thoughts reduce to one thin, perfect line of delight, and it explodes behind his eyes. He feels the Face burn inside his head, feels the echo linger for several minutes, drawing out the climax like a note held too long, while Ianto trembles inside of it on the bed. Too much, too much, trapped inside his own body sparking with an excess of pleasure that is almost pain.

The mind withdraws, and Ianto gasps, free suddenly but also empty.

"Apologies," says the Face again, and there's an afterglow coming through that Ianto thinks even the party-goers will be able to hear.

"Don't apologise," Ianto says. "Unless it's for ruining me for ordinary sex. And you did that ages ago." He's sticky, and messy, and his clothes will need cleaned, and he doesn't care.

A chuckle, which fades. "I miss you." The unexpected sorrow takes his breath away again, and he places an unsteady hand on the jar. Does anyone get to touch the Face?

"I'm going to be here for three more days. Plenty of memories left to make, yeah?"

The Face smiles. "Yes."


	7. More of a Good Thing TEAM ADULT

**More of a Good Thing**  
Characters: Gwen/Tosh/Ianto/Owen/clones  
warnings: crack  
prompt: clones, any character, any pairing  
AN: Inspired in great part by **angstslashhope**'s "We Happy Few". Go read it. (Pack a lunch.)

* * *

The first time, it was an accident brought on by too little sleep and far too much stress. Ianto juggled the stack of folders with one hand, and the artefact with the other, and really, anyone could have made the mistake with the button.

A flash of light later, and there was another him, standing in the room, blinking owlishly. Also stark naked.

Ianto first assessed the situation, consulted Owen to check on the nature of the thing (exact duplicate, down to the DNA), then made up his mind. He brought his double a spare suit, since he kept most of his suits there these days, and put him to work on the filing while Ianto went to help in the field. They needed all the help they could get with Jack gone, so one more Ianto was overall a good thing.

By the time they'd returned from the mission, filthy and tired, there were two more of him waiting, wearing more of his spare clothes.

"What's all this, then?" Owen demanded.

"Ianto," said Gwen, part soothing, part worrying, "you can't just keep cloning yourself."

"_I_ was in the field at the time. But it isn't a bad idea. One of me for field work, one to do maintenance, one to keep the Archives, one to handle the Tourist Centre." The other Iantos nodded in agreement.

"It's creepy is what it is," Owen said, and he went into his work area and refused to speak to any of the Iantos for the rest of the long day.

Gwen patted the original Ianto's shoulder. "Sweetheart, we're all overworked. This isn't healthy."

"I'll figure something out," he said.

After Gwen had walked off, Tosh came closer. "What device did you use?"

The following morning, there was one additional Ianto (in charge of maintaining the SUV) and there were also two new Toshes.

"Tosh?" Gwen asked, taken aback at the twinned women at the computers.

"I needed help compiling this," said Tosh Alpha. "And Mainframe is frankly long overdue for an overhaul."

Owen came in a bit late, and screamed when one Ianto offered him coffee while another busied himself cleaning the med bay. "This has really gone too far," Owen said when he'd recovered what passed for composure.

"I agree," said Gwen. "We need to lock the artefact in the secure archives."

Ianto Alpha said, "I'm the one who knows the codes for that, and so do they."

One of the Toshes said, "I could probably hack into it in about five minutes."

Gwen sighed. Her phone rang, and she answered it. "Hello, Rhys. Yes, love. I remember. Noon. I'll be there."

An alert went off as soon as she closed the phone, and she swore as a Tosh said, "No, you won't. We've got a Rift spike on Hope Street. Big one."

Gwen looked stricken at the prospect of abandoning her fiance once again. Then she looked at the Ianto who was busy dusting while another one cleaned the kitchenette. "What's this device called?"

"I don't believe you," Owen said in disgust, getting his kit for the field.

Sleeping arrangements were arranged by two more Iantos, who cleared out some old storage spaces in an unused area of the Hub, and soon a clone dormitory was up and running. Extra Gwens and Toshes appeared throughout the day to help, and Owen grumbled that whenever he counted teaboys, there was always one more. When everyone gathered in the main Hub the following morning, it was to find two Owens, dressed in scrubs, in the process of converting the old boardroom to a greenhouse for his plants, another in the middle of an autopsy, and a fourth looking at porn.

The Owens all looked at the others. "What?"

Five Gwens, Seven Owens, and two Toshes later (they'd reached a maximum containable number of Iantos), the Hub was crowded and bustling with activity. Missions were assigned one after the other, with no worry except no doubles. The systems in the Hub were running more smoothly than they had in years. Gwen, still pretending Jack was merely on an assignment rather than missing, fielded grateful calls from Whitehall and even received a word of thanks from Mr. Saxon himself, who everyone said was a shoe-in when the vote came round. He even had an investigation he wanted them to undertake to the Himalayas, which Gwen sent four clones to go check out, whilst giggling a little.

The day the flight left, two teams came back to the Hub to discover everyone still there had stopped work in favour of what anyone (except Jack) would describe as the world's weirdest orgy. Gwens licked and nibbled each others' breasts, while Toshes rode Owen cocks and Ianto cocks, and one Owen thrust into a Gwen while getting fucked by an Ianto, and two Toshes were in a pleasant 69 off to one side, and three Iantos were enjoying themselves with an Owen, while a Gwen passionately kissed a Tosh while both were being double-teamed by both men, and any mouth not occupied by kissing was filled with a cock or licking a cunt. The elbows and knees alone were a sight out of some Goyaesque horror.

"What's going on?" Gwen Alpha demanded.

One of her clones paused mid-lick to say, "The power cell is dying. We're only going to live another ten minutes. We voted to go out with a bang." Gwen Delta went back to her work on Ianto Epsilon. The four clones on the aeroplane were probably enhancing Torchwood's reputation all by themselves.

Tosh Alpha and Ianto Alpha both tilted their heads, entranced, while Owen pulled out his camera and began taking pictures. Gwen Alpha looked like she wanted to protest, and instead was distracted by the arses of a particularly amorous Owen/Ianto coupling.

Sure enough, in about ten minutes, amid groans and screams and spurts and appeals to God, the giant pile of fuck sort of melted into a viscous mess of green slime and a little trickle of jizz.

Except for the naked Owen in the middle. The Owen with the camera had melted away. Owen Alpha said, "What?"

Ianto went for his mop, while Tosh hurried to lock the artefact in the secure archives and change the passcode. Owen pulled on his clothes. Standing at the edge of the mess, careful to keep her boots free of it, Gwen said, "All right, everyone. When Jack gets back, nobody tell him about this."

They were all in perfect agreement.


	8. It's Time to Play the Music TEAM

"It's Time to Play the Music"

for Temporal Witch

* * *

"They arrived a little over fifty years ago as refugees through the Rift. I've met the species before. They're harmless. Their entire culture is based around what we'd call a variety show." Jack grinned.

"But ... " Tosh looked distraught. "They're puppets."

"Yeah," Owen said, "Hand in a sleeve, golf ball eyes."

"No, they look like puppets. Henson worked for our US branch ... "

Gwen broke in, "We have a US branch?"

"We did," Ianto said darkly.

"Anyway," said Jack. "He took responsibility for the aliens, gave them a job and put them to work helping people. It made them happy, and educated two generations of little kids. Good deal all around."

Owen said, "What does this have to do with us?"

"We got a call from Kermit this morning. They need our help. Big Bird has gone missing. I don't need to tell you the kind of trouble we're looking at if people find out there's an eight foot tall yellow alien with the mind of a six year old on the loose." As Ianto distributed their plane tickets, Jack said, "We've gotta follow that bird."


	9. Hemiparasite JACK IANTO

Title: Hemiparasite  
Fandom: Torchwood  
Characters: Ianto, Jack  
Rating: PG  
Requester: **anyjen**  
Prompt: Mistletoe (I may pick up the others later!)

***

He holds the mistletoe between two fingers. So many legends, so many myths, and he once read them all, because quiet boys who are a bit shy get beaten up less when under the safe eye of the librarian at school. Books aren't the best protection, but they can stop hard words from landing so brutally, and they can be a place to hide.

In the myths, the mistletoe shot down the most bright and beautiful god, who could not return for the lack of one god's tears. Ianto has never had that problem, which was another good reason to stay out of the way of the bigger boys. He can't always stop them even now, and part of him thinks that's a little piece of the magic. The most bright and beautiful god who dies like a solar legend all the time, he can come back because there will always be someone there to shed tears over his corpse. It's Ianto's own private myth.

One little sprig, so much trouble.

"What've you got?" Jack looms behind him now, warm and playful and currently quite alive. No arrows sticking out, no veins spurting his life's blood, just Jack when their work is finished for the day and they can both pretend for a couple of hours that they aren't who they are.

"Just a bit of decoration." He goes to set it down, but Jack's never been stupid, and he grabs it and holds it high above them, as high as his arm can stretch.

"Have I ever told you about the time … " Ianto stops him with a kiss, because yes, Jack has told him about that time, and also the other one The man never stops talking. Jack laughs into the kiss, and then tilts his head just so, and it's always like this, kissing Jack, like the sun is coming back after a long, awful winter deep under the sullen snow.

***


	10. For Only Gossamer My Gown ALICE JENNY

Title: For Only Gossamer My Gown  
Fandom: Torchwood  
Character: Suzie (team mentioned)  
Rating: PG  
Summary: No one is better at planning than Suzie.  
Spoilers: TKKS  
Prompt: Torchwood, Suzie Costello, _pick a side, pick a fight / but get your epitaph right_

***

Plans within plans. Suzie wants to live, wants victory over her demons, wants everything. Her head buzzes with ideas, scraps of data, computer pathways, and the endless pouring of small white pills into her hand. Controlling the memory means controlling the past means controlling history means creating the future. Control is the thing she wants the most, is the thing she feels as the glove encompasses her hand.

But they are coming closer, like flies. Jack brought a detective in, claiming _she_ found _them_. Tosh is brushing against her codes. Owen examines the bodies of her kills. Even the office boy with his secrets (oh yes, she knows about the basement) watches her from the shadows.

She needs a backup plan, and if it fails, she needs an epitaph no-one will forget.

Brain alive with thoughts of death, Suzie opens her book of poetry, and plans and plans and plans.

***


	11. Noon ALICE

Title: Noon  
Fandom: Torchwood  
Character: Alice (Johnson and Jack mentioned)  
Rating: PG  
Summary: Mornings are the hardest  
Spoilers: COE  
Prompt: Torchwood, Alice [/Agent Johnson], getting by

***

Mornings are the hardest. During the day, he could be at school. At night, he could be sleeping. She has no excuses for morning.

She ought to get up, get breakfast for them both, pack lunch, check the weather to see if jackets or coats are necessary, and go go go. She shouldn't lie here in bed, watching the reflections from the cars outside flicker across her ceiling, shouldn't count the minutes and hours and days since…. Since.

When she goes outside, her neighbours stare, and some offer kind words that she is long past hearing for anything but "Thank God it wasn't me." Sometimes she thinks she catches a glimpse of a long coat, but she refuses to check closer and give him that satisfaction. She does know the woman is watching her, shameless and shamed, in a car parked not halfway down the street or waiting at the store where Alice buys half the groceries she once did, never coming closer. No words, not false kind ones, not apologies, not a thing and Alice would never accept regardless.

Sometimes her mornings last all afternoon, and into the cool, silent evenings, the cars going by and the world going on outside without her. Sometimes she's certain that she died that day as well, and her body simply hasn't learned to stop. Sometimes she's afraid that her traitor genes won't let her die.

But sometimes, on the rarest days, she wakes up before dawn, and the silence that follows her inside hushes the outdoors. Then she rises from her rank and rumpled bed, ventures out into the anticipatory quiet, and she stares up as the stars wink out above her, and her feet take her for walks far away from the stifling house with the empty room. Morning comes somewhere else, for other people, and Alice is out, and cars rush and other people's children get ready for school, and Alice is out, and Alice is out, and Alice is free, and the sun above her is the only one watching.

Sometimes, mornings end and turn to noon.

***


	12. Tragedy, Bryce, Curiosity, Home, Magic

Title: Tragedy  
Fandom: Torchwood  
Character: Owen, others mentioned  
Rating: R  
Spoilers: up through "Dead Man Walking"  
Warnings: Owen dialogue  
Prompt: small injuries

_"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." - Mel Brooks_

It's the stupidest fucking thing.

He was writing, and who the fuck writes anything down anymore? Nobody writes on paper. That's why they have fucking computers everywhere. But no, Owen had to get a clipboard and a fucking pen because he was feeling nostalgic or some fucking thing, and now he's got a fucking paper cut.

It's not as debilitating an injury as when he sliced his hand open or broke his own bone. He doesn't have to worry about infection, and as long as he keeps it closed, he shouldn't have to think about parasites. (God, Jack brought up the parasite thing. Apparently his corpse gets nibbled on from time to time when he's dead long enough, why does Owen have to think about this shit now? Fuck.)

It's just a paper cut, a little flap of skin that will be separated from the rest of his fucking integument for the rest of fucking eternity. Superglue, sticky tape, staples, he can push the edges together, but they will never rejoin in a pale pink scar like the one he used to say was from a knife fight when he wanted to impress some bird. The words "Doctor, heal thyself" become yet another monumental fucking joke. He and Jack should take their act on the road: the man who can never die, and the man who can never live. They'll sell tickets, matinees on Sundays for the grandmas.

He looks at the offending paper, still on his clipboard, where he'd run his hand up the side all unawares. He wants to throw the fucking thing across the med bay, wants to scream until someone comes down here to see what's wrong. But Tosh will just get that crying look on her face, and Gwen will look all big-eyed and sorrowful, and Ianto will try not to show his pity, and God knows what Jack will do other than crack more fucking jokes and try to pretend this isn't his fault. And at the end, Owen will still have to finish this damn report.

The clipboard is mocking him.

He picks it up anyway, paper cut and all, and he goes back to work.

* * *

Title: Dear Bryce  
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who  
Characters: Tony Tyler/OMC (Jack/Ianto/Lisa mentioned)  
Rating: G  
Spoilers: none, part of the Rabbit Hole AU  
Warnings: kidfic, deeply fluffy  
Prompt: a year ago

Dear Bryce,

You're going to turn one year old in about two hours. Your Tad's asleep already, but you should forgive him for not staying up to watch you turn over the year. He's been planning your party for a couple of days now, and he's tired. You're stuck with me tonight.

It's weird, looking back. I can't count the number of nights I came in, when you were still a baby, and your Tad was stretched out on the bed beside you, wide awake and just watching you breathe as you slept. He'd just lay there, sometimes for hours, wearing nothing but his pants, his eyes so big and full of love for you. Between you and me, because I'm not showing this letter to you for a long, long time, and we'll both be past that? I think I was a little jealous. He loves me, but he's never looked at me quite like I was the centre of his world the way he always looks at you.

You're going to grow up hearing so many stories. The story of how your Aunty Isabelle just looked at us one day and said, "You know, you'd make great dads," and she said she wanted to help make that happen. I remember going to the clinic with her, and I remember when she called to tell us she was pregnant, and we were both so nervous we almost couldn't talk. Your Tad and I were in a meeting when she had her twenty week ultrasound - your Nan was with her, and she called. They said you were going to be a girl. We had names picked out and everything. A year ago tonight, we sat in the waiting room while your Nan was back with your Aunty Isabelle. Your Uncle Eddie brought her in, and paced as nervously as a new dad himself. Your Granddad was there in the waiting room with us (we've got pictures, he loved you very much), and your Grandpa Jack too. (Forgive him. Yes, he's always been like that. Yes, we love him anyway.) Your Aunty Callie came in, but she had to wait outside with us. And then the doctor came out and said your Aunty was fine, but there was some confusion. She'd said there was going to be an adoption, and they normally don't let families of the mum go back with the baby when there is, not at that hospital. And your Tad stood up, and his voice got deep in that way I know you're going to hear plenty when you're growing up and getting into mischief, and he told the doctor that he intended to see his daughter RIGHT NOW. And that's how I knew he loved you so much he could burst already, and he was ready to shoot anyone who got between you. Even if he'd never met you, and even though he didn't even know you were actually our son instead of our daughter.

I don't know where we'll all be when I show this to you. You'll probably be a teenager, and hate our guts. I was a menace to my parents back then. I wish you could meet them, but you should know that they'd both love you, too. Know that we both love you, that I love you completely, and that your Tad does too, and that we always have, and that no matter what, we always will.

Happy birthday.

Love,  
Dad

* * *

Title: Home Is the Sailor  
Fandom: Torchwood  
Characters: Jack/Ianto  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: none, part of the Intersections 'verse  
Warnings: sap alert  
Prompt: a long way from home

There were too many places in his past to think of one in particular as home, but Ianto found he missed them each in turn as he left. Like it was yesterday, he remembered the estate where he'd grown up, the little room that smelled of damp and the too-thin walls through which he could hear his parents fighting on one side, his sister's radio up too loud on another.

Three days after his dad died, a day after the funeral, he took every pound he'd scraped together from part time jobs and wherever else he could and he bought a train ticket to London. His first flat had been worse than his room back home, tiny and foul no matter how much bleach he used. The flat he'd shared too briefly with Lisa had pillowed him with her, perfumes and furnishings and colours too soft to meet his tastes, but loved because they were hers. His flat in Cardiff when he returned, tail between legs, was barely lived-in, forsaken first for a chair in a cold basement storage room, and later a warm camp bed. Rhiannon's house had never been home, as much as she'd said he was welcome there.

When he'd come to the future, he'd had only a place on the floor with a Jack who didn't know him, and home had never felt so far away. Then they'd shared a large red house on a planet with no-one but each other and the dogs and the sound of the wind in the trees for company. And now …

Every day on the _Celes Tirra_ was different. He slept in a bunk not quite as small as the camp bed, and he rose in the darkness of space and slept every night between worlds. They docked, for an hour or a few days (or however time was marked in each system, by each species) and sometimes they spent a whole week on some world or another. Jack loved the ship, Ianto viewed it as a cherished necessity, but always they went back to her, and Jack would place his hand upon her side, and Jack at least was home.

Then Jack would turn to him, and give Ianto that smile, and that was home enough.

* * *

Title: Drabble: Curiosity  
Fandom: Torchwood  
Character: Ianto  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: up through "Adam"  
Warnings: see episode  
Prompt: you're being followed

Too many things are out of place.

There's the missing two days, obviously, and the absent Retcon, and the warnings about prying. Your diary isn't where it belongs, and Jack will never stop teasing you about what he reads. But there's more. Your personal items aren't where they belong, lined up neatly to differentiate them from Owen's mess. You're uneasy, all the time, like you're being followed.

Rarely, out of the corner of your eye, you catch a flash of ginger hair. Worse, much worse, sometimes you think your can hear voices, just out of earshot. They are always screaming.

* * *

Title: It's Magic  
Fandom: Torchwood  
Characters: Tosh, Jack  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: none  
Warnings: none  
Prompt: predictability

Jack liked to say that the weirder the alien tech, the more likely it was to be something familiar in a new package. Jack liked to say a lot of things, though, and Tosh had learned how to filter out the bullshit a long time ago. He was the main source of their information on what new artefacts were, and if that many things falling through the Rift were actually sex toys, she'd eat his coat.

This … was something else. It fit into her hand, uncomfortably large. She made notes with her other hand, how the size indicated species, perhaps they were of a scale slightly larger than human, perhaps their hands were large claws like the Slitheen.

"Now that," Jack said from right behind her, "is an interesting thing, and highly prized in some parts of the galaxy."

"Sex toy?" she asked, exasperated.

"Much better." And for him to say that was enough to pique her curiosity. He took the device from her. "Am I going to pull successfully tonight?" He gave it a squeeze.

The device hummed, and then Tosh felt the brush in her mind, as sure as day, that yes, Jack would certainly go home with someone tonight. His grin spread, and she knew he was just as pleased at the news.

"It knows the future?" The applications were endless, and intriguing.

"Sadly, no." He gave it back to her. "It assesses probabilities, looks at possible upcoming events. The closer the event, the better the accuracy, but more than a few days out, and you might as well be guessing. Fun party game, though." And with a smile, he left, and she noted that he didn't stay long afterwards.

When he was gone, and the Hub was silent, Tosh swallowed her disbelief and picked it up, thinking about the handsome young doctor Jack had hired a month ago. "Will he ask me out?"

Another hum, and then the strangest thought filled her: _"Reply hazy. Try again later."_


	13. Voodoo, Do You, If You, Knock Knock

Title: Voodoo Child  
Author: **nancybrown**  
Rating: PG  
Characters/Pairings: Team (Jack/Ianto implied)  
Summary: Musical interlude  
A/N: This was supposed to be the first in a set of "turn on your MP3 player, write while the song plays, stop, do the next one" stories for a meme. Life interfered and I never got to any more songs.

* * *

"Here come the drums, here come the drums!" The loud music echoed through the Hub, annoyingly so. Tosh frowned then huddled deeper into her own seat, wishing Owen would turn it down.

A moment later, Gwen said, "Owen, turn that down."

There was no response, only the music going a bit louder. Owen was in a mood this morning. Tosh turned to Gwen, who looked worried. Her eyes moved to Jack's office. And that was odd. He was a million miles away, and while she'd seen expressions like that before, it had been a very long time. She shivered. Jack's body was with them, but he wasn't anywhere nearby, and wherever he was, it wasn't pleasant.

"Owen?" Gwen said again.

A shot rang out. The music stopped abruptly.

Tosh's head turned to see Ianto putting his gun away. "Ianto?" Owen came out of the med bay at last, confused and tensed.

Jack's face snapped back into reality. He came outside. "What just … Who fired?"

"Sorry, sir. Accidentally discharged my weapon in the Hub. I'll go fill out the forms." His voice was calm and completely unrepentant.

"Do that." But on his face, Tosh read his thanks.

* * *

Title: Do You?  
Author: **nancybrown**  
Rating: G  
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto (Gwen mentioned)  
Summary: Drabble. Weddings are overrated.  
A/N: Instant remix of a **twgenrefinders** request, also sappy as hell.

* * *

It's not a wedding or a partnership. Jack doesn't talk Alice into putting on a dress, or Steven into finding a wee tuxedo. Ianto certainly doesn't want Mica strewing flowers everywhere. They don't pick a best man; they'd both want to ask Gwen anyway, and how would that work? They don't sign papers, or hold a party, or even announce it to the team.

Instead, it's far too late, or far too early, and they are nestled together, tired and happy, when Jack says simply, "You know. Right?"

Ianto says, "Yes," and pulls him closer, and it's enough for both.

* * *

Title: If You Do It With Care  
Author: **nancybrown**  
Characters: Jack, Nanny Ogg  
Rating: Technically? Nothing above a G.  
Summary: The two greatest sexual explorers in the multiverse have a chat.  
A/N: Written for **touchyerwood** prompt: "Jack/Nanny Ogg (Discworld) Anything for these two. Either as a pairing, or comparing notes."

* * *

"Have you tried a Reverse Klatchian?"

Jack scratched his head, parsing the concept. "Yes. But only with humans. My turn. Species?"

Nanny sat back. She took a puff from her pipe. "Three. No, I lie, four. You ever met an Igor?"

Jack grinned in memory of a man with extra appendages. "As a matter of fact, yes. I should drop by while I'm on-planet. Oh, I thought you would like to know, I've been experimenting since the last time I visited."

"Oooo," said Nanny, eyes sparkling. "Do tell."

"The Hedgehog Song? Is wrong."

Her laughter echoed down the mountainside.

* * *

Title: Knock Knock  
Characters: Tosh, Gwen, Sarah Jane  
A/N: Written for pocky_slash's prompt, While Jack is gone post-S1, Gwen stumbles over the existence of Sarah Jane and invites her to give them a hand in Jack's absence.

* * *

"Now that's odd," said Toshiko, squinting at her screen through her glasses.

"What is?" Gwen came over to her station.

"Nothing." But the word was distracted, a sound made to fill silence and didn't mean anything. "Oh no you don't!" Tosh typed furiously.

Gwen left her to it. Tosh was in Toshworld, a mysterious borderland between virtual reality and the real world, where she barely noticed outsiders, and wouldn't eat or sleep if she weren't reminded. Tosh had spent a lot of time in Toshworld since Jack had left them, coping the best way she knew how. Gwen had had to learn this, learn the various methods of muddling through used by her team. (Her team? She gave the orders because Tosh and Ianto refused to follow Owen after that disastrous first time. They weren't a team, they were a weary band of ex-mutineers, and she was their leader, God help them all.) Owen drank less and swore more. Ianto acted as though if he did enough work rebuilding the damaged Hub, that the restoration would somehow magic Jack back to them. Tosh hid inside her head and her programs. Gwen spent her hours worrying about the rest instead of wondering where Jack had gone.

She went back to her own work, keeping half an eye on Tosh. She'd sent the boys out to investigate a sighting of something that could be a Weevil, and could be nothing, mainly to quiet their mutual sniping or at least get them out from underfoot. That left the Hub quieter, for the two of them to catch up on work. Now Tosh had something new to do. Several minutes after her initial outburst, Tosh sat back in her own chair, wearing a satisfied smile.

"You look pleased."

"Someone was trying to hack into Mainframe. I thought UNIT gave that up ages ago." Her smile slipped. "It wasn't their usual methods, either. Whoever it was kept poking around the back doors, slipping out of sight when I shut them."

"Were we compromised?" That was the last thing they needed. Bad enough that they were lying to everyone, claiming Jack was gone on a mission, was away from the phone, was still in charge. It'd be worse to get caught with their trousers down. Figuratively speaking. Were actual trouser-dropping to occur, that would be the time Jack chose to reappear, Gwen was certain. It was very nearly worth a try.

"No," Tosh said with certainty.

"All right." More was probably required. "Good job."

Tosh smiled and nodded at the compliment.

An hour later, Tosh swore at her computer.

"What's wrong?"

"He's back, and he's trying to change the data in my files." Her fingers flew over the keys, fighting a menace only she could perceive. "Oh, he's sloppier this time. I think I can trace him."

"Do it," Gwen said, though she supposed telling Tosh that was unnecessary. This was personal.

Tosh worked at her station, while Gwen tried to concentrate on the report she was writing about last night's messy business at the hospital. No-one had died, that was something.

"It's not UNIT," said Tosh after a while.

"Foreign?"

"England. Ealing. I've traced it back to a neighbourhood. I think we were just hacked by some kid with a laptop." Her outrage grew with every word, and she turned back to her computer. "Let's see if he likes this."

"Tosh, don't start a war with anyone."

"I won't start one. I'll finish it, though." She began to type, and data scrolled by in the background, too fast to read.

Gwen had a thought. "Tosh, wait."

"Why?"

"Think about it. Someone who's bright enough to hack into Mainframe? That's someone who might be valuable to us."

"Or a threat."

"Could be," Gwen admitted. "And if they turn out to be one, you have my permission to destroy their network remotely." She hoped that was the right phrase. Tosh looked appeased, so it probably was. "But for now, let's see who's trying to say hello."

"'Let me break into your house' is not 'hello.'"

"Humour me."

Tosh muttered under her breath. Then as Gwen watched, she typed, "Hello. You know who we are. Who are you?" She opened another window in the background, and began looking over something Gwen didn't recognise, but whatever it was, it made Tosh bite her lip.

Nothing else happened for a long moment. Then words appeared: "You're Torchwood."

Tosh looked up at Gwen, who shrugged. "Yes," Tosh typed. "You?"

"Hold, please."

Tosh and Gwen stared at the screen. Then the display changed and pixelated into the form of a middle-aged woman, dark-haired with a somewhat annoyed expression on her face. "Hello?" she said.

"Hello," said Gwen. "I'm sorry, who are you?"

The woman sighed. "My apologies. My computer sometimes has a mind of his own. He said he was poking around your system 'for fun.' It won't happen again."

"Fun?" sputtered Tosh. "You broke into our system … "

Gwen cut her off. Tosh was very protective of Mainframe, which she understood, but now wasn't the time. "We're Torchwood," she said, and observed a the twitch on the other's face.

"Yes. You are."

"You have a computer that can break into our system. And our system is part alien." It was a gamble, but one she was ready to take. Another twitch. "I can only guess your system is also part alien."

Tosh said, "I saw your computer's files. You have records about aliens." Her other window came up again.

"We can help each other," Gwen said.

"I don't think so," said the woman. "I know about your group. Too many guns, too little understanding."

"That's changing. You could help us change." She put on a hopeful smile. "My name is Gwen Cooper. This is Toshiko Sato."

The woman's arm moved, as though reaching to turn off her screen. Then she paused. "Sarah Jane Smith. All right. I'm listening." 


	14. The Power of Soup JACK IANTO

The Power of Soup

Written for Taffimai's prompt: J/I, Jack with a fever

* * *

"Shoot me."

"No."

"It's the fastest cure."

"Owen reckons antibiotics and a good night's rest will do the same thing and not make a mess."

"But I'm dying. I know what it feels like."

"More chills?"

"Just give me the gun. I'll clean up when I come around."

"Bloodstains don't come out of leather, and as it's my sofa you'd be ruining, the answer is still no."

"I could go into the bathroom."

"Eat your soup, Jack."

"It's cold."

"Then I'll reheat it. Don't commit suicide while I'm in the kitchen."

"You're sexy when you're cross."

"I see the delirium is back. We are not fooling around until you're no longer contagious."

"We should call into work to see if everything's okay. Or go in. I could rest there."

"Sit down, Jack. Everything is fine. Gwen will call if there's an issue. You're under orders from your doctor to rest. I'm under orders from Gwen to keep you out from underfoot while you do."

"But I'm bored."

"That I believe I can help with. I rented us some DVDs from that shop you like. I asked the clerk to look up which ones you rented most."

"You did?"

"Check my bag. It's on the floor."

"Um."

"What?"

"Can I add a rule that what a guy happens to rent while his favourite personal assistant is in London for a meeting with the MoD should by no means be held against him later?"

"Check the bag. Soup's almost ready."

"These are all Gene Kelly films."

"You like Gene Kelly. You can say thank you by not taking this opportunity to go into any reminiscence of dating the man."

"I wouldn't say 'dated.'"

"Eat your soup."

"Eating. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"No, I mean ... Thanks."

"I know what you meant. You're welcome."


	15. This Site Temporarily Unavailable ALICE

Title: This Site Temporarily Unavailable  
Recipient: **queenfanfiction**  
Author: **nancybrown**  
Rating: PG-13  
Characters/Pairings: Alice, Johnson  
Spoilers and Warnings: through COE  
Words: 550  
Beta: **amilyn**  
Summary: Nothing matters to Alice any more.  
Author Note: Just a little thank you to QFF for all she's done. :) Written for the **tw_femficfest** bonus round!

* * *

Alice leaves him sitting there, and doesn't look back when she hears him walk away. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. The sedative in her bloodstream wore off an hour ago, and her calm is her own.

"Mrs Carter?"

The woman, Alice only knows her as "Johnson," stands stiffly, formally. Alice wants to hate her too but doesn't have the fire. Her hate was a quick burn, leaving Alice herself in ashes.

"You need to see this."

"Go away," Alice says, but Johnson's hand is on her arm. Perhaps she is leading Alice away to die. Alice finds she doesn't mind. Hundreds have died since yesterday morning and her world has contracted to the space inside her own head. One more death can easily be shunted into the pile of bodies from Thames House. One loose thread can be cut to incriminate the monsters who let the aliens inside.

Johnson escorts her to the morgue. Alice rears back when she sees the door. She held her baby already. Holding him again will kill her as surely as the bullet Johnson has planned.

"Please, stop."

"Trust me."

Alice chokes on her laugh. Trust the woman who brought her child to his execution? "You must be joking."

"I don't joke." She drops her eyes. "I can't and won't apologise for the role I've played over the last few days. I was misled. That's not an excuse, but it's the truth."

"If that lets you sleep at night, fine." Alice is numb. She could sleep for hundreds of years.

"I am ... sorry," the word comes out in a tone speaking to its unfamiliarity in Johnson's mouth, "for what you've been through. That's why I had to check."

Two soldiers stand guard outside the morgue. Johnson flashes her ID. Alice is going to sob again, feels the scream building up inside her throat. Steven will be still, his skin cleaned of blood and turning blue, his flesh as cold as Mum's when Alice held her hand after she died.

" ... and they all had guns! It was just like on the television!"

Her knees give way at the threshold. She would know that voice after a thousand years.

Her mouth wants to form the words that this is impossible, but her brain remembers the first time she watched her father die, his chest bloody from a clawed gash, remembers his gasp back to life. He has always told her to be careful, told her it's not a facet of his bloodline, told her so many lies, come to think of it, that it's a wonder she ever believed a single word he said and didn't walk off a building to test him right then.

The door opens, and Steven is sitting up on the slab, thin chest bare, looking around at the soldiers and the terrified mortician like he's just popped up as a surprise from a birthday cake.

"Oh, hi Mum!" he says, when he spies her at the doorway. His face, his beautiful face, puts on his pouty, thinky frown, as he calls it. "Are you all right? You look sad."

And her knees sort themselves out, and her heart beats again for the first time in hours, and yes, she hates Jack for everything he's done, but her arms are full of little boy, and old resentment doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all.

* * *

The End


	16. Interplanetary Relations TEAM

Interplanetary Relations  
(warnings: technically could be non-con)

Written for the Torchwood Cliche Fest, going on right now at nancybrown dot livejournal dot com.

* * *

Jack looked around the conference room. Not a soul would meet his eyes. Today was for Stern Boss mode. He could laugh to himself in private later. Much later.

"I'm not casting any blame right now. We can sort out whose fault it was once we contain the intergalactic incident. Okay?"

Still no eye contact. He'd hoped to draw out the guilty party. He wasn't sure what he'd say if all four of them had been guilty parties. Jack sighed.

"I'll even take my share. In the past I may have overstated the number of artefacts we find that were invented for ... entertainment purposes." That number was not helped by how many he'd used for his personal entertainment, and the entertainment of select others. Ianto did shoot him a glance then before dropping his eyes to the table. Owen continued examining his nails. Tosh was blushing to her ears. Gwen's look of mortification could be seen from orbit.

Jack cleared his throat. "But I think the main problem right now is, how do we best apologise for the grave insult Earth accidentally gave to the ambassador of the dildo-shaped aliens?"

* * *

The End


	17. Paternity Test JACK AND GWEN

**Paternity Test**

written for the Torchwood Cliche Fest, going on right now at nancybrown dot livejournal dot com

Tropes listed at the end.

* * *

"God damn you, Harkness!"

Gwen's shout echoed through the Hub. Jack winced. He watched as Ianto and Lois made eye contact and both ran for other area of the base as Gwen stalked through the main Hub, eyes flashing in anger.

"Yes, Gwen?"

"My husband, whom I love - and I will likely have to say so on the witness stand when I'm brought up on charges for killing him - had our baby's DNA tested without telling me. Care to explain why my daughter has your DNA?"

Her steps reached the bottom of the stairway. Jack made his way down carefully, mindful of the woman ready to shoot him.

"Well, there's the normal possibility."

"Don't you even dare. I know for a fact you and I never did anything that would cause a baby, thank you very much, Mister I Have Already Shagged Half The City."

"That's '_Captain_ I Have Already ...'" He stopped. Gwen was not going for jokes right now. "No. We never did."

"Are you sure we didn't? Did you Retcon me?"

He let out a breath. "I'm absolutely positive we didn't. Gwen, um." Jack scratched the back of his own neck. He'd been hoping never to have this conversation. "Did your parents ever tell you that you were adopted?"

"When I was eleven. They sat me down. We talked about it." Her eyes widened and then narrowed. "You're kidding me." She poked him in the chest hard. "You are bloody well kidding me!"

Jack smiled weakly. "I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not. Neither of us was ready to raise a baby, and I already had one child support payment to make. And you know what this life is like."

Her face broke as the knowledge finally settled in. Gwen semi-collapsed, going to a sitting position on the bottom step and resting her head in her hands. "Oh God."

Jack knelt down beside her. "I thought it would be better if you never knew. I was going to stay away, but you kept coming back. I figured I could protect you better here."

"I hate you."

"I know."

"I really, really hate you."

He wrapped his arms around her anyway in a hug. "I know."

"You should have told me you were my father."

Jack bit his lip. "Well, if we're being completely honest with each other now, technically, I was your mother." Never, ever, _ever_ doing that again, Jack thought.

"Oh God."

* * *

tropes: Jack is someone's father, mpreg


	18. Golden Years TEAM

**Golden Years**

Written for the Torchwood Cliche Fest, going on right now at nancybrown dot livejournal dot com

trope: artefact causes weird aging issues

* * *

Tosh caught Ianto checking his thin hair in the reflection of the greenhouse window. A deep frown marred his face, dragging the saggy skin downward. Self-consciously, she put her hand to the back of her own head, pulling a silvery lock forward for inspection. "Don't feel so bad," she told him.

"Easy for you to say. Yours isn't falling out. I look like my grandfather."

Jack stepped out of his office. "Remind me to invite myself to your next family reunion. Your grandfather's hot."

Ianto pulled another face.

Jack called down to Medical, where Owen was performing an exam on Gwen. "You two, get up here."

"In a minute!" snapped Owen, all crotchety belligerence.

"What?" said Gwen.

"I said, get up here."

"My ears are fine!" she shouted back. Slowly, the two of them made their way up the stairs, holding onto the railing carefully. Owen wasn't sure how brittle their bones were, fifty years on, and he said he didn't want them to take risks.

"I've figured it out," said Jack, beaming. A sigh of relief went through the room. The artefact had activated unexpectedly, and no-one was taking the blame. Tosh had been running a diagnostic, true, but she'd had it sitting on her desk. Owen said he'd seen Ianto dusting nearby, Ianto said he'd seen Gwen in button-pressing mode, Gwen swore Owen knocked into it. Currently Jack was the only one any of them trusted to touch the device as he sorted out how to change them back. Despite also having aged fifty years, he looked exactly the same, not a hair out of place.

"So fix us," Gwen said, as Jack handed the Geezer Laser to Tosh, pointing out the modifications he'd made. She examined the interface closely.

Owen said, "Yeah. The faster we get back, the faster your toy-boy stops looking like a pensioner."

"Fuck off," said a very old, very annoyed Ianto.

"I think it'll be okay," Tosh said, handing it back to Jack. "Do we want to test the laser on just one of us?" She glanced around at her grey-haired (and balding) colleagues.

"In for a penny," Gwen said, like someone's gran.

"Right." Jack turned the switch. Once again, Toshiko was overtaken with a wrenching pain that began in her shoulders and radiated out everywhere. She shut her eyes and tried not to scream as her body rewrote itself. She fell into her chair, barely aware of the contortions and agonies the others went through around her, until blessedly, the pain settled away.

She opened her eyes.

The first person she saw was Jack, who of course looked exactly the same.

Owen had vanished. No, just shrunk. A surly little boy, no more than six, stood inside the voluminous lab coat around his ankles. A five-year-old (or so) girl with wide eyes and a dark fringe sat on the floor beside him. Tosh looked down at her own smaller body in horror. Jack would have to take legal custody of them, pretend to foster or adopt the lot, send them to school, even. They'd have to regain their own bodies over the course of decades.

Tosh would have to relive puberty.

Jack said, "Whoops."

The toddler wearing Ianto's oversized suit began to cry.


	19. In Plain Sight TEAM AND MARTHA

**In Plain Sight  
**

Written for the Torchwood Cliche Fest, going on right now at nancybrown dot livejournal dot com

trope: secretly a Time Lord

* * *

Martha and Jack were alone in Jack's office with the door tightly shut. Both sets of eyes watched the thing on his desk. Watched, hah, she thought.

"You know what this is."

"That's why I called you in," he said. "I was pretty sure, but you've seen two of them."

The fob watch lay unassumingly on the desk blotter, its patina of age nearly hiding the delicate scrollwork on the case, mysterious symbols that whispered what hid nestled within.

She didn't touch it. "Where did you find it?"

"Funny thing. It's been in the archives for two years, got logged in with a bunch of items that all arrived around the same time." His eyes weren't on the watch, though. Jack looked out his window. The others worked like ants outside. Martha couldn't help but notice his gaze following two of his employees in particular. She'd seen their records the last time she'd been here. Both had been hired two years ago.

"They're your friends," she ventured carefully. "If the watch belongs to one of them, you already know them both, Jack. They'd never hurt you."

"And Dr. Yana was a nice old man."

Martha shivered. She hadn't dealt with the worst of the Master's tantrums, only seen the results. Jack was terrified that one of the people he was close to might turn out to be a mad Time Lord (or Lady) and Martha certainly couldn't tell him differently.

"I hope it's her," Jack said.

"You do?" She wouldn't have expected that, but she hadn't been here in some time. Maybe things had changed.

"I'm wrong. A Fact. The Doctor said so. And the Master." He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The Master had said many terrible things about Jack's condition. "They can sense me, and they hate it. If I had to choose," he said, looking out the window again, "and I don't want to have to choose, but if I did, I'd rather Gwen be the one who wants to vomit every time she's in a room with me. Or worse, the one who goes off to see the galaxy without me." He laughed, a little, unhappy. "Don't tell."

"Quiet as the grave, me." She moved around the desk to stand beside him. She took his hand. "Do we open it? Or do we let it stay in the archives and never know?"

Jack stared for a long moment into space. "What do you think?"

"I'd normally say better a known threat than an unknown threat, but like you said, Dr. Yana was a sweet old man."

"We open it." His voice was firm. "If we've got another fob-watched Time Lord we need to know. Get ready to make a phone call." He scooped up the watch. Martha followed him out to the main part of the Hub. The rest continued working. Above them, the pteranodon launched from her aerie, gliding around in the shadowy darkness near the ceiling.

Jack cleared his throat and got their attention.

"What's going on?" Gwen asked, approaching carefully, her eyes on Jack's hand. Ianto stood behind her, frowning. Owen made his way up the stairs. Tosh stayed in her chair, but twisted around to see what was happening.

Jack glanced at Martha. Then he popped open the watch.

For a second, nothing happened. She almost allowed herself hope this wasn't what they'd thought. Golden tendrils of light emerged from the watch. Damn.

The Hub's power conduits overloaded with the immense energy discharge, sending sparks out before the lights went dark.

"Everybody stay still!" Jack shouted, but seconds later, there was a loud thump.

The emergency lights clicked on. Martha scanned the faces around her, her heart racing. Who was it? How terrible of a thing had they just unleashed?

A large, dark lump lay on the floor, eerie in the low light, and rising before them now.

Jack dropped the watch from slack fingers. "You ... "

"Oh dear. Apparently, we need to talk," said Myfanwy.


	20. Got Wood? TEAM

**Got Wood?  
**

Written for the Torchwood Cliche Fest, going on right now at nancybrown dot livejournal dot com

trope: Trojan Horse

warning: Owen POV

* * *

A bolt of hot plasma shot over the top of the desk where Owen and Jack crouched. Across the way, the girls hid under another desk. They were trapped until and unless Ianto got back here. Gwen had tried to call him before her mobile was disintegrated. She wasn't sure she got through in time.

Owen said, "Let me get this clusterfuck straight. Jones is off having a holiday with his relatives for two days and because you're his dirty little secret, you didn't go with him."

"Hey, I am many dirty things to Ianto, but I'm not little _or_ his secret. We had dinner with his sister last week. She's cute, in a comfy chair sort of way."

Owen was familiar with the expression passing over Jack's face. "If you suggest a threesome, he will shoot you dead where you stand."

Jack sighed. "You're probably right."

"So Jones is out, and we closed the stupid Tourist office, meaning the packages he normally receives and checks over for anything suspicious piled up outside the door. And you brought them in."

"I couldn't leave them out there."

"Yes, you could have!" shouted Gwen from across the room.

"You brought them inside," Owen continued, "and despite knowing the protocol, despite having written many of the protocols, and having personally trained every person on the team in said protocols on handling unknown items, you fucking opened the packages without scanning them first!"

"It was only one and I said I was sorry." He looked contrite, and Owen would almost feel bad. Jack had spent the two days of Ianto's holiday moping and distracted. He'd also spent them bitchy, which was why Owen refused to care.

Owen risked a glance over the top of the desk. The deadly item swivelled back and forth, covering the whole Hub. Someone had sent it to them, and Jack had fucking brought the fucking thing fucking inside.

"And none of that would have been more than your usual distraction brought on by a lack of getting your cock sucked, except that the item you then activated was what, Tosh?"

From the other desk came an angry, "It was a horse!"

Gwen added, "It was made of wood!"

Jack said, "How was I supposed to know?"

"You've never heard of the Trojan horse?"

"Isn't that a kind of condom? Those big ones that taste like peppermint?"

Tosh said, "I think I can reach my mobile. Jack, can you draw its fire?"

Jack winced, then dove out in plain view of the horse. More plasma bolt blasted. One of them hit, killing Jack for the second time today. Tosh shouted her triumph as she reached her mobile phone and flipped it open.

"Call Jones, see if he can disarm this fucking thing from outside," said Owen. He mentally added, _and never let him take a holiday alone again._


	21. Me and My Shadow OWEN TOSH

**Me and My Shadow  
**

Written for the Torchwood Cliche Fest, going on right now at nancybrown dot livejournal dot com (February 2nd is the last day! Get your fics in!)

trope: evil twins

* * *

Four guns were aimed at his head within seconds. Toshiko was too startled even to lift hers. "But ... It's Owen."

"The fuck it's not," Owen glowered. He was wearing the same Mickey-Mouse-giving-the-finger t-shirt as he had been earlier in the day. He hadn't been out of sight. Another Owen had unexpectedly appeared in the middle of the Hub in a bright flash of light.

"Okay," Jack said. "Talk. Who are you, and what are you doing in my base?"

The other Owen's hands went up, his eyes wide. "Jack, it's me. You hired me in 2006, right after Katie died. Tell me you remember." His voice was calm, pleading.

Gwen turned to Tosh, mouthing, "'Katie?'" Tosh shrugged, mystified.

Their Owen, Mickey-Mouse Owen, said, "It's not me. He's reading my mind."

Jack said, "Take a blood sample. If he's a shapechanger, we'll see. My bet is we're dealing with multiverse slip. Bet you walked sideways into our universe from yours."

"Fuck," said both Owens.

* * *

His blood work came back clear, and genetically identical to their Owen. Toshiko scanned him with every program she had. "I've got it. Look, you can see the Rift energy on him here and here, and that," she pointed to a place on her graph, "is the quantum-level flux we saw in other cross-universe incidents." She smiled proudly.

The new Owen smiled back. "Tosh, you always were a genius. Now, can you get me back?"

Her smile dimmed.

* * *

They called him Kent, because both Owens said it was their granddad's name. Kent helped Owen in Medical, and acted as an extra pair of hands around the Hub otherwise. Jack ordered him to stay put and not go out in the field; none of them wanted to explain Owen's sudden gain of an identical twin. He took to the incarceration with good grace, to everyone's surprise.

"Could be worse. I'm not in a cell or dead, after all." And he smiled.

"You're not a prisoner here," Jack clarified. "You just have to be careful. If we decide to reintegrate you with the outer world, you'll have to move somewhere Owen won't be."

Since he lived at the Hub, occupying Jack's vacant bunker (and teasing Jack a bit - the Jack in his universe was still pretending he wasn't practically living with Ianto), and he had the run of the place, Kent used his free time to help. He organised Gwen's cross-referenced records with the police. He listened carefully to Tosh's instructions and helped her compile her programs overnight, saving her hours of double-checking in the mornings. After some initial distrust, and more than one jibe about their Owen's lack of interest in same, Ianto let Kent take over part of the Hub maintenance. Kent pushed a broom as easily as he dissected an alien, and he did both with a quiet happiness that was infectious to everyone else, except the original Owen who rolled his eyes and muttered a lot.

Two months after he'd joined them, with no option of returning him to his universe in sight, Kent came up to Tosh late one evening and shyly asked her out on a date. To her own surprise, she said no, but five minutes after walking out the door, she called him and said yes after all.

They went to the cinema. He was a perfect gentleman.

Two more dates went just as flawlessly, and the next date stretched into morning. Jack smiled knowingly as they came in together. Gwen giggled and nudged Tosh to talk later. Owen kicked things in Medical and didn't say a word.

In fact, it wasn't until after the seventh date or so, when Tosh had mentioned to Jack the possibility of Kent being allowed to move out of the Hub and in with her, that they finally spotted what had happened. They were in the conference room. Owen was busy shredding the morning's agenda before him into thin, perfectly even strips and refusing to look at Kent or in fact any of them. Tosh was giving her final report on the universe-travelling event which had brought Kent to them.

Jack said, "And with that, we're closing the case. Kent, you're here for good now."

Owen said loudly, "Fuck."

Ianto stared at him. "Oh my God. That's it."

"What's it?" asked Gwen.

"He's the evil twin."

"Kent isn't evil," Tosh said, but Ianto was looking straight at Owen, who wadded up the shreds of paper and threw it at his head.

"Fuck off."

"I see what you mean," Jack said, and ducked from the next flung paper ball.


	22. The Friendly Skies JACK IANTO VICTORIANS

**The Friendly Skies  
**

Written for the Torchwood Cliche Fest

tropes listed at the end

* * *

This was not being Jack's best day ever. Killed twice, that wasn't out of the ordinary. Typical Monday. But it had been over one hundred years (longer, but he tried not to think about that) since he'd last been killed by Alice Guppy, and he'd been just fine with that. But to find adolescent clones of her and Emily Holroyd taking over a commuter flight to Glasgow, that was past a bad Monday and well into Friday the Thirteenth territory.

Alice grinned at him, her switch blade at his throat. "Can I stick him again?"

"Please don't," said Jack wearily.

"Hold off, sweetheart," said Emily. "You can stick him again in a moment." She jostled Ianto threateningly. He rolled his eyes. Jack had said not to hurt the two women - girls, really - despite having died twice himself. He wanted to find out more, and as long as he was the only one getting hurt, he could allow the moment.

Gwen was on his headset, caught between horror and giggling. _"Really, fifteen year old girls?"_

"And a fifteen year old boy flying the plane," Jack said. He'd seen young Charles in the cockpit.

Giggles won.

"Just agree to our demands," said Alice, "and the passengers and your little pet go free."

"Pet?" Ianto mouthed, offended.

There were only three other passengers: a man reading his newspaper and ignoring them, and a little girl travelling with her granny, both of whom seemed to think this was the in-flight entertainment. The little girl had been wearing a three-cornered brown hat that looked like part of a well-loved Pirates of the Caribbean Halloween costume, Emily had snatched the hat away and plopped it on Alice's head, where it teetered fetchingly. The little girl decided that made Emily and Alice on her team, and she was rooting for them whilst her granny ate raisins from an oily paper sack.

Jack said, "You haven't told us your demands."

"We haven't?" She looked at Emily. "We didn't tell them?"

"I thought you did."

"We want a baby," Alice said, poking Jack in the belly with the tip of her knife. "And a puppy." She glared menacingly. "Got it?"

"We can arrange that," Ianto said smoothly. Not that anyone would be psychotic enough to allow this pair anywhere near an infant, but Jack was willing to negotiate. "Labrador or poodle?"

Emily loosened her grip on his arms, which was enough for Ianto to break free. He swung at her, but Emily Holroyd, even as a teenaged clone, was veteran to many a street battle, and she ducked easily. Alice glowered, then turned and swiped her blade across Jack's throat. He clutched at his wound, already feeling the greyness slip in at the edge of his vision.

God, he hated these two.

As his vision darkened, he watched Alice attack Ianto from behind, watched Emily fling open the aeroplane's door, and watched, heartbroken, as the pair flung Ianto out the door to his death. Moments later, he felt the drag on his feet as they yanked him towards the same fate. The last thing he heard was the little girl applauding wildly, and her granny critiquing the special effects.

"They do it all with computers these days. Shame."

Jack died.

He revived on the ground, about ten feet away from Ianto's body. Coming back to life was always like being dragged over glass, but it was far worse when someone he loved wasn't going to be there when he woke. Hr crawled over to the bloody, ruined suit, feeling tears prickle at his eyes as he straightened his lover's clothes for the last time.

Ianto gasped and jerked alive. Jack startled back, horrified.

"Jack?"

"This can't be."

Ianto looked down at his messy clothes, and sorrow filled his face. "Oh God."

"Ianto, I'm so sorry." It must have been all the life force Jack had been sharing with him. He knew he could offer a spark of life, but lately, they'd been ... sparking pretty furiously. "I never meant ... "

"Would you look at this?" Ianto said, plucking one blood-stained sleeve. "This will never come out. And that spot is brain matter, I'm sure of it. I had to change dry cleaners after the last time."

Jack was confused. "Last time?"

Ianto got to his feet and held out a hand to help Jack up. "That Weevil, the one you said I wouldn't have any trouble with? I don't mind the immortality, but we need to talk about my clothing allowance. Coming?"

Gwen's voice came over Jack's earpiece: _"The aeroplane is coming in for a landing at the Glasgow airport. I'll have the police meet you there."_

"We're not on the plane, Gwen. Can you send a car for us?"

_"What do you mean?"_

Ianto tapped his own ear. "Nothing to worry about. Jack and I got off the plane early. Track our position. That car would be nice." Off in the distance, Jack could hear cars going by on some unseen road. They headed in that direction.

"How long have you been immortal?"

Ianto shrugged. "At least two weeks."

"And you didn't mention it."

"Oh, like you can talk."

By the time they reached Glasgow, the plane had touched down, the clones had traded the passengers on the plane for a labradoodle and an anonymous frozen sperm sample, and taken off again for points unknown.

The little girl was still giving her statement to the police: "An' she used my hat! An' there was blood _everywhere_, it was fab!"

"Paisley," said the granny, poking the girl. "Say thank you to the two actors. That's a terrible blood pack they've made you use, dears, but I suppose it's all computers these days." She insisted, over their protests, in giving them each a penny.

"Actors don't make much money," she said in what she probably thought was a whisper to the child.

"I wanna be a pirate! Arr!"

Jack looked at the penny in his hand. Then he looked at Ianto, who performing coin tricks with his. "Shall we get a room and deal with Torchwood Glasgow tomorrow? I could use a bath."

As they walked, Ianto said, "Since I'm immortal now, we're going to make some changes. First, I want a pay rise. After that, I was thinking we should move in together. When we get married, we ought to hyphenate our names. Do you want to name the children after your parents or mine, or shall we plan on four to get them all?"

Jack stopped, horror closing over him. Ianto caught his eye and winked. "I was joking. Anyway, I've decided we're naming the children after Toshiko and Owen."

Jack took it all back. This was definitely a Monday.

* * *

Tropes:  
• held hostage on an airplane  
• the suit  
• Sexually Transmitted Immortality  
• [character] is a clone of someone from the past  
• high school pirates who are trying to get pregnant and want a puppy


	23. Jumble Sale TOSH GWEN GRANNIES

Title: Jumble Sale  
Characters: Tosh, Gwen, the colour-coded Grannies  
Rating: PG-13 (language)  
Warnings/Spoilers: none  
Summary: Tosh and Gwen go on a retrieval mission together.  
AN: Written for a prompt at The Women of Torchwood Commentfic Fest. Prequel fic to Just Because They Protect You Doesn't Mean They Like You

* * *

The basement of the church has a sour odour, like pensioners, used clothing, and a faint overtone of the vicar's elderly cat. The four grannies running the jumble sale are very nearly interchangeable versions of each other in lavender, peach, blue, and pink shawls. Pink Granny is guarding the table with the spare toasters, electric kettles, and other gently (or not) used small appliances. She's got a gummy grin and a sharp eye.

"Here," says Toshiko, under her breath. She has out a scanner shaped like a Blackberry, and she looks like she's texting rather than tracking down alien junk.

Gwen picks up the device casually. It looks like a cross between an alarm clock and a video game controller, one of the cheap plastic ones permanently glued to the hand of some teenaged boy. The tag on the item making Toshiko's "mobile" beep says it's fifteen pounds.

Gwen smiles at Pink Granny. "Oh, I've been looking for one of these. I'll give you five quid for it." She has her money ready, petty cash from the spare account. She's not sure how Ianto's juggling their financial records to make it appear everything is still normal to anyone at Whitehall who might be curious, but they're trying to make as small a splash as possible. Maybe Jack will come back before the higher-ups have noticed he's gone.

Pink Granny moves faster than Gwen could have imagined, snatching the artefact from her hands. "Fifteen, pet. It's for God's work, you know."

God isn't going to like what happens when this thing goes off. Gwen bites her lip and tries another smile. "You're right, of course." She only has ten quid left from the account. She hands it over, folding one note to make it look like two.

Pink Granny isn't fooled. "Fifteen." Blue Granny and Lavender Granny have come over to flank her. Gwen can easily take down all of then, but there's something menacing about the cane in one's hand, and the angry look on the other's face.

"Tosh?"

"Hm?" Toshiko has wandered off to another table, fingering a lace doily with every sign of interest.

"I need five pounds."

"Sorry, I only brought my card. How much for this?" she asks of Peach Granny. "I just love this pattern."

"Fifty pence for all the doilies, dear," Peach Granny says sweetly.

Tosh dugs into her handbag and pulls out her coins. "I'll take both of these, thanks." She takes the doily she was examining, and another. Gwen stands there impatiently as Tosh walks up to where Pink Granny has the cash box. As she brushes by Gwen, she trips, and Gwen's instinct is to catch her. Tosh pulls on her arm hard, falling into the table and jostling her hip.

"Ouch!" she says, steadying herself as Gwen massages her own wrist. Tosh has dropped her coins, and her handbag falls open, spilling out her glasses case and an assortment of pens. Pink Granny bends down to help her clean up, and Gwen slides the large doily right over the abandoned artefact. A minute later, Tosh's handbag is back together, she's placed the coins in Pink Granny's hand for her doilies, and Gwen is acting as casually as she can holding the doilies and the artefact.

As they hurry out of the basement, Gwen's conscience tells her, I just stole from the church, I'm going to Hell, I just stole from the church, I'm going to Hell.

They reach the car park without being followed. Gwen heaves a sigh of relief and Tosh takes the artefact from her hand, unwrapping it.

She frowns. Gwen frowns. This isn't the alarm-clock-video-game-controller. This is the clock radio that was next to it on the table. As one, they look back at the basement. The prospect of facing the Grannies is too much to consider.

Gwen's earpiece crackles. Owen says, _"We're on our way back. Fucking thing imploded. Bloody mess. How did the retrieval go?"_

She looks at Tosh. Tosh shrugs. "It went fine. Finishing up here. We'll meet you back at the Hub." She clicks off. "Let's find a cash point. And then we can figure out what we're going to tell the ladies downstairs."

"Our consciences made us come back," says Tosh.

Gwen sighs. "Yeah."

***


	24. Sweets From Strangers RHIANNON IANTO JAC

Title: Sweets From Strangers  
Characters: Rhiannon, Ianto, Jack (implied Jack/Ianto)  
Rating: PG  
Summary: Rhiannon already knows what her brother does for a living.  
Warnings/Spoilers: up through COE, mild child abuse  
Summary: Rhiannon already knows what her brother does for a living.  
AN: Written for a prompt at The Women of Torchwood Commentfic Fest

* * *

Rhiannon saw her first alien when she was nine. She and her mates were out late at the playpark, but Mam didn't mind and Dad wasn't home, and an alien ran through the swings. She saw it, Amber saw it, Catherine said she saw it but she was looking the wrong way. Three adults chased it and caught it. One came back, a man with a big grin.

"What did you see?" he asked, and the girls told him, and he nodded seriously. Then he offered each one a sweet. Amber and Catherine ate theirs but Rhiannon didn't take sweets from strangers, and gave hers back.

The big grin faded.

The next day, Mam got a visit from the police, saying Rhiannon had been seen messing about after dark, and to keep a better eye on her. She got an earful from Mam and a hiding from Dad, and both of them yelled at her to set a better example for her stupid, snotty little brother.

Amber and Catherine didn't remember anything about the alien. Rhiannon thought bitterly she should have eaten the sweet.

* * *

She saw her next alien when she was thirteen. She and Mam were in the car, and it dodged out of nowhere, smacking into the bonnet and leaving a huge dent. Mam screamed, Rhiannon screamed. When they got out to see the poor bloke Mam was sure she'd killed, they both saw the slavering creature. It had two heads.

"Get back inside," Mam said in a quiet voice, and they managed to lock the doors before the enraged monster hit the windows on Mam's side.

Rhiannon heard a gunshot, and the thing fell. Adults swarmed around the car. A lady with a long ponytail said she was a doctor, and she checked out Rhi and her mother. Off to the side, gathering up the "escaped gorilla," Rhi saw a grin she recognised. When the lady offered her a drink, Rhi pretended to swallow.

Mam took a long, long drink. Rhi noticed, and kept her own thoughts when the car was replaced out of the blue the following day, when Mam started having trouble remembering loads of things, when Dad took so much time away from work to drive Mam to doctor after doctor.

If she told what she knew, they'd make her forget, the way Amber and Catherine and Mam had. When her stupid, snotty brother started spouting his own stupid, snotty theories, she slapped him in the mouth and went into her room to cry.

* * *

Living in South Wales meant knowing about strange things, and paying attention when "ghosts" turned out to be robotic monsters. She wasn't sure about the terrorist attack at One Canada Square, but she knew what to do when the weird came calling: point to the Bay.

Then her stupid, snotty brother got a job working by the Bay, and if he barely had spoken to her when he was in London, he said nothing at all until he showed up one night, eyes red from crying, like he'd just noticed that his girlfriend had died months ago. He wouldn't talk about anything, but she supposed he wasn't there to talk, only to be comforted.

She saw her fifteenth or sixteenth alien - God knew she'd stopped counting - in the ASDA. It was ripping through cheeses like it was Christmas, and she knew enough now not to scream, just to get away very quickly. She waited in the crowd outside as some showy black SUV pulled up.

Her stupid, snotty brother was driving it.

She remembered Mam, and Amber, and Catherine. Rhiannon left her packages and got into her car quickly, before the memories could go away, but not before she caught the smile on the man leading the way into the shop.

There were ways she could play this, she thought, driving home. She could tell Ianto he'd been seen, and watch him squirm. She could pretend nothing had changed. She could go to the Bay herself, go in the shop where he worked, and tell him she knew.

She pulled over, and texted him on her mobile: _Meet me later. We need to talk._ And before she could scare herself out of it, she hit SEND.

After a moment, she sent a second text: _Bring your friend with the nice smile._

That should get his attention.


	25. Novelty JACK IANTO ADULT

Title: Novelty  
Characters/Pairing: Jack/Ianto  
Rating: Adults only  
Prompts: games, domesticity, avant garde

* * *

Sometimes, the domesticity scares him.

They still fight aliens, naturally, and they still work with the non-lethal ones. Gunplay isn't a kind of sex game (usually) nearly so much as it saves their necks. The Earth and Cardiff are in danger more often than a hero's love interest in a badly-written film, seemingly back in harm's way after barely a moment's time for some quick kissing. It's all very exciting. Honestly. Quite.

But when he and Jack are home, things are frankly so normal to be a bit terrifying. He's learned to cook under Jack's patient if inconsistent teaching, though Jack still makes the majority of the meals they eat here. Jack leaves him the washing-up too often, but does show up to dry, using the tea towel to drag Ianto in for kisses when the crockery isn't endangered. Their neighbours genially tolerate the odd hours and invite them over for dinners and parties they can't accept. Even the housework is mundane, the dusting and hoovering traded off as neatly as you please.

"What?" Jack asks, after an early night (and no bad thing, bloody Rift back in full fury after that lull Ianto had let himself believe was the new status quo, their first night home before eight in a week, ugh). He's folding underclothes, and looks frankly ridiculous with socks spread around him in neat piles on the bed.

Ianto frowns. "Do you see this?" He waves his arm, taking in the neat bedroom, the whole flat really. "What are we doing?"

"Folding," Jack says, like Ianto's an idiot.

"This is surreal," Ianto shoots back. "You're Captain Jack 'I've Shagged Half the Galaxy and the Other Half Are Next' Harkness. Why are you folding my socks?"

He hears the other question curl up in his voice, and he doesn't like it. He sits down heavily on the bed, away from Jack.

"We don't have to fold the socks."

"Jack."

Jack breathes. "What's the sexiest thing we've ever done?"

"What?"

"Pick."

Ianto thinks back, remembering nights spent spread-eagled in this bed, nights spent tying Jack meticulously to his desk and buggering him hard, nights spent drawing his name in alien languages over Jack's skin with chocolate paints and eating him clean again. "I can't pick." What would Jack choose, given every dalliance they'd every undertaken? Jack likes the feel of Ianto's fingers stretching him open, and Ianto knows Jack loves nothing more than the blunt head of a cock pushing into him, with his cries muffled by a thick rubber gag and his body convulsing with effort. Would he pick that?

"I can," Jack says with simple certainty. "The sexiest thing we ever did was in the living room. You turned on a programme you didn't want to watch, and you fell asleep with your head on my shoulder."

"But that's … " He struggles for words.

"Amazing," replies Jack. "It was amazing." And it occurs to Ianto that this is just like the office: something incredibly mundane is out of Jack's experience. "I'm more than happy to drive my tongue into your mouth then deep into your arse, to strip you in the back of the SUV and suck you down like a lolly. That's fun. But this? Folding socks and washing the plates? That's special. That's new." He grins. Jack is nothing if not a sucker for novelty.

"Fair enough," Ianto says, mind ticking over the images Jack has conjured. "And I understand. But perhaps we could … " He raises his eyebrows suggestively. " … up the game now and then?"

Jack's grin widens. He grabs three socks, tying two together to make a longer cord, and deliberately brings the third up to Ianto's mouth. After a moment, he opens and lets Jack push just enough inside. Then Jack removes Ianto's shirt and ties his wrists together.

By morning, the socks are stretched out beyond any possible wear, but Ianto is too tired and happy, and just sore enough in the right places, to give a damn.

***


	26. Future Impurrfect IANTO JACK JOHN HART

Title: Future Impurrfect  
Characters: Ianto, Jack, John Hart (mentioned)  
Rating: PG  
Words: 700  
Spoilers: up through COE  
Warnings: Captain Bad Touch says, "Read the trope."  
Summary: Not for the first time, Ianto hated the future.  
AN: Written for **pearlseed**'s prompt of a missing bit from Intersecting Geodesics. Also fills Trope Bingo square: animal transformation

* * *

Not for the first time, Ianto hated the future.

He could adjust to waking up three thousand years after his death, could manage biding his time with a much younger version of the man he loved back home, could wrap his head around working with aliens every day. He'd mastered the skills to get to and from the flat he, for lack of a better word, shared with Jack. He worked hard in a pub for an alien whose name he couldn't pronounce, cleaning up and running errands for two different aliens whose names he had yet to learn. (He thought of them as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They thought of him as a mentally-challenged sex slave on loan for janitor duty. And so it went.) He kept his head down, hoping to avoid interest from the Time Agency, who wanted to plop him on a planet somewhere far away raising sheep, and from John Hart, whose wants Ianto didn't care to consider. He made his own continuous, quiet plans to find a way back to 2009 and to the task of cleaning up whatever mess Jack had made of things in his absence. He'd even managed to impress younger Jack by very stupidly attacking an alien hell-bent on killing him.

In short, Ianto could very nearly handle anything the future threw at him whilst he worked on getting back home.

Nearly. Very nearly.

He sighed heavily, and was displeased to hear how much it sounded like a purr.

Jack didn't even try not to laugh. "I warned you."

Ianto growled. Jack snorted again, and the bastard actually stroked him behind the ears with a certain amount of affection. "'Be careful what you eat,' I said. 'Some of the things the customers bring into the pub aren't good for humans,' I said."

Ianto narrowed his eyes. He'd seen what the less-savoury patrons brought. Jack wasn't on any drugs that Ianto knew of, and hadn't been for some months, but Hart came to visit frequently with a new bag or box or snifter. "It passes the time and numbs the pain," Jack had said once, when Ianto had asked.

Not content with dropping a sample of his latest finds into Jack's drinks, Hart had slipped Ianto the occasional dose of nothing good. Thankfully, Tweedledum, who doubled as a bouncer, had sharp eyes. Even with the language barrier, he'd warned Ianto more than once. The warnings may have saved his life. They almost certainly had saved what remained of his virtue and dignity.

Last night had been the evening of a Nardek holy day, which meant the Tweedles were off. Ianto had been run off his feet working alone. No-one had been watching his water glass. It may not have been Hart. It didn't matter much now.

He let out a plaintive sound, and suffered the indignity of Jack lifting him up and setting him uncomfortably on his lap. Sitting so close, and swimming with brand new senses, Ianto could taste the air around Jack, could almost see it heavy and rich with his scent. He was a three-dimensional cloud radiating out, all of him wafting through the air: sex sex sex. Ianto growled again, this time in frustrated annoyance. He twitched his tail, smacking the hairless appendage against Jack's leg.

"The good news is," Jack said, continuing to scratch Ianto behind the ears, "this will wear off in about a day."

Ianto sank onto his ungainly perch on Jack's lap. He tilted his ears up, hoping the questioning signal would get through.

"I don't know what the bad news is," Jack admitted, "other than your being a _nimbom_ for a while. By the way, I'll set papers on the floor in case you need to pee. If they see you walking down the hall to the private, I'll get evicted. No pets." And because this Jack was learning, he even managed a mumbled, "Sorry."

He wasn't sure how later, because the small furry creature he'd become apparently didn't have the muscle control to do the action, but Ianto rolled his eyes anyway.

* * *

The End  
***


	27. Angel on My Shoulder JACK IANTO

Title: Angel On My Shoulder  
Author: **nancybrown**  
Fandom: Torchwood  
Pairing: Jack/Ianto  
Rating: PG  
Warnings: conversation format, crack, mocking of actors  
Words: 900  
Summary: In which Jack's daemon is eerily familiar. Also there are handcuffs.  
AN: Written for Trope Bingo square: au: daemons

* * *

"No, really."

"No."

"I swear it's true."

"I don't believe you. Jack, I can make myself believe most of your stories. I even believe the one about the woman with the extendable tentacles."

"Hey, that happened. That was one hell of a weekend. Did I tell you about ..."

"Yes."

"Are you sure? Because there were a hell of a lot of ..."

"YES. You told me. With diagrams when I wasn't sure I believed you then. And now I do. All right? But I refuse to believe you spent a month living in another dimension ... "

"Universe. It was another universe."

"UNIVERSE, where every person had their own shoulder dragon."

"They weren't all dragons."

"So you've said."

"Everyone had their own unique daemon. Something specific to them, to their personality. Lot of dragons, enormous number of cats."

"But not you."

"Well, no. My daemon was ... "

" ... a drunken gay Scotsman who liked to get into the bathtub and serenade his invisible dog."

"Exactly."

"No."

"Got me into a lot of trouble, too. Most daemons had a sense of humor. Think of it like that little voice that you keep quiet so you don't say out loud what you're thinking about other people. Now add in what I'm usually thinking about."

"I'd be more than happy to tell you what I'm thinking about you right now."

"Really?"

"Not that."

"You're missing out. As I was saying, though, imagine having that little voice, except it follows you around and says what you wish you could say but shouldn't. Like a distilled version of your own personality with no filter."

"You _are_ the distilled version of your own personality with no filter. May I remind you that you insulted three Cabinet members on that conference call yesterday, and I had to call them back and soothe their tempers for over an hour?"

"And you do it so well."

"Don't think flattery will affect how cross I am."

"You're sexy when you're cross."

"Not helping."

"Now, see, my daemon ... "

"Not that again."

" ... would have taken that opportunity to hop over and kiss you on the cheek."

"Which would be bloody difficult as we're both handcuffed to the wall. Could your drunken gay Scotsman have found us the key?"

"Maybe."

"But you can't summon him in this dimension. Sorry, universe."

"No."

"So why did you bring him up in the first place?"

"You mean my clever plan?"

"To distract me from the fact that we're trapped here and when our captors with the three heads get back, they're going to kill us? Well, me. They'll likely get bored with you after enough tries."

"That plan, yeah."

"Is it working?"

"Apparently not. But since I'm on this side, and you're over there, and my legs won't reach, I'm not up for distracting you in a more fun fashion. Or kissing you on the cheek myself to pretend we're going to be fine."

"So instead you're pretending you can send a drunken gay Scotsman over to do it for you?"

"Call it a visit from my inner self."

"You're not gay or Scottish, and you don't drink."

"All true."

"This wasn't how I pictured our final conversation to go."

"You've been planning our final conversation?"

"Not exactly."

"Come on, tell me about it. Are we naked?"

"I can't believe you're thinking about sex now."

"Ianto, I'm handcuffed to a wall. We did this two nights ago."

"I don't suppose you have the handcuff key handy?"

"No."

"So, exactly like two nights ago, then."

"Hey, I got you free eventually."

"Believe me, I am resting here in the firm belief that once you stop obsessing on your imaginary friend from another universe, you'll figure out something."

"And if I don't?"

"Then, Captain, it's been a pleasure to know you, in every sense."

"Likewise. Look, we'll find a way out."

"I hear something. Listen."

"That's not ... "

"They're coming."

"I'll try to talk them out of it. I'll do something. Just stay by the wall, look inconspicuous. Whatever you can. I'm not letting you die here. All right?"

"Jack, stop."

"And when we get out of here, you can tell me how you think our last conversation is going to go. Because this isn't it."

"I thought I'd be older. And that you'd be holding my hand."

"You'll be ninety years old. I'll tell bad jokes and we'll scandalise the grandchildren. I'll hold your hand the whole time. I promise."

"They're here."

_"Jack! Where are you!"_

"Gwen! We're in here!"

_"We got the aliens."_

"Oh, thank God."

"Good work."

_"Thank Tosh. Now, get back from the door. We're going to have to blow it."_

"Hold on, Gwen. Ianto, see if you can move over there. If I pull like this, I might be able to shield you from the blast."

"I can't move, and neither can you. Now might be a good time for that drunken gay Scotsman, though."

"Are you sure?"

"Unless you have another way out. Remember, you owe me terrible jokes and holding my hand when I'm ninety."

"And scandalising the grandkids, don't forget. Gwen, we're ready."

_"All right. Three...two...one..."_

* * *

The End  
***


End file.
